Thanks for posting this! I think people try to make up their own generator cords because some of the ones you buy have low quality connectors & don’t stay connected properly. I had bought some on Amazon that I wound up returning. The wire stripping and clamping to the terminals part requires time and patience and the right tools!
It looks like moisture got to it. I have seen them turn dark like that when they were left out in the weather. I like to put a little silicon grease on the ends to help keep that from happening. But don't get stupid about putting it on there. A very little goes a long ways! Put a little on and wipe most off
Moisture intrusion and wicking. Marine wiring and electronics installs was my primary job for years and have seen stranded conductors wick great distances, especially with extreme temperature and humidity changes.
Simple explanation. In a 4 pin 220 volt male generator plug, the locking terminal (the bent one) is the ground. Opposite that is neutral and the other 2, similar in appearance to each other, are lines 1 & 2. (Power) If you need to run an extension cord to power up a trailer normally fed by 220 volts but not running 220 volt appliances, you can 'cheat' a bit by connecting two wires together. (2.5 mm 3 core flex minimum, 2 core flex may be used but would require bridging out pins 1&2 inside the 220 plug housing) Using the smaller pin on a 2 pin 110 volt male plug, connect two wires. (With a 3 pin 110 plug, the round pin is not used) Then connect those two wires to each of the power pins (lines 1&2) in the locking 220 volt male plug. Next, connect another wire to the remaining large pin in the 110 volt plug and connect that to the neutral pin in the 220 volt male plug. This will safely feed all the 110 volt circuits. Be careful not to overload the system. Remember this is a 'cheat' system so a degree of caution is required. More importantly, be sure to plug in the 220 volt male plug to the 220 volt female receptacle on the trailer *before* plugging in the 110 volt power supply as the prongs on the male plug will be live. I've used this system with great success on a number of trailers and small areas for 'temporary power' when 220 volt power is unavailable.
Sulfur from the rubber wire insulation can blacken copper. That is why old rubber insulated knob and tube electrical wire was always tinned copper. Another issue with making up heavy cords is to orient the cable so that the wire insulation colors are oriented the same way as the sequence in the connector. If you have to cross over, you should reverse the cable end for end so that you do not have to cross over conductors within the connector shell.
That white wire shows signs of a loose connection. A loose connection will cause overheating and discoloration. Copper is an excellent conductor of electricity AND heat. I've seen it many times, even in my own home. The electricians who wired the home when it was built got sloppy and lazy. Caused a loss of power at a downstream outlet four years later.
2:01 Another issue, which you missed, is that several of the conductors in the green jacket have been cut, derating that wire. Improper wire stripping techniques have been used. Really you should use a properly adjusted and good quality wire stripping tool. If you are going to strip with a blade, score lightly around the entire circumference of the wire until you can snap the insulation away - don't "saw" into the conductors.
James - it looks to me like the whole cord is bad. I would recycle that one for its copper content. The insulation has had the biscuit and the 7 feet of oxidized copper on the white wire shows overheating and bad storage. Ditch it. It's an accident waiting to happen.
Agreed. This cord has overheated on the white, probably due to a loose connection. The outer jacket looks fairly badly abraded. Neither end had been terminated properly by whoever originally assembled the cord. I wouldn't hesitate to discard the connectors and throw the cable itself in the scrap bin.
Over tome the wires will darken, as far as moisture goes, all of the wires on that end will look alike. We all get moisture in them over time. Nice catch on the cut rubber coating.
I worked as a maintenance guy. The other maintenance person that was there was making a new cord for a label machine. He was crossing the white wire over the black wire for the male plug.i had only worked there a few months.him 10 years or more. I mentioned if you use the other end of the cord the wires would be correct. He looked at the other end of the cord did not talk to me rest of day
If on the generator the neutral is "bonded to frame", you don't use the white wire when hooking it to a power panel. That's what the sticker on my generator connect power panel reads.
I've seen that discoloration on wires a hundred times, sometimes the strands have a coating because of the type of insulation. If the wire was blackened from heat the insulation at the end would be discolored and brittle or cracked. I would have cut 6 inches off of everything and restripped. But .3 ohms is a little high, should be in hundreths of ohms, and 2 ohms definitely not good. Is it a halfway good meter, and can you "zero" it out? Some non zeroing meters have a built in error. Try the probes together alone if they drop to zero. I have a cheapo harbor freight that zeroes down to .02 amp just touching the probes together. Hope this helped in some way.
I had wired an extension cord for my compressor one end correct and the other wrong. White goes neutral and the other to power. If you reverse one end it will turn the neutral wire black and arc at the plug end of the wrong connection . So I think that you still have a problem with the neutral and power wirers on the cord.
Looks like pretty shoddy workmanship to me. I recently made my own cable with L14-30 terminations for 240 volts and it took at least an hour. This is because I took the time to properly strip the wires and make sure they were secured in the proper configuration. Plus I went even further and did a resistance and continuity test to double check. I wanted to make sure everything was proper before running a load using the cable. I think where people get into trouble is they don't take the time to research what receptacle type their generator has. So many of these locking plugs look similar but are actually distinctly different in terms of wiring layout and current carrying capacity. I can't count the number of times I pulled up the wiring schematic for my generator to verify things. Luckily in this case this cord didn't catch fire.
It does take close to an hour to do a good job making one of these. The thing that surprised me is that this cord was rated at 30 amps and the generator only 20 amps at 240 volts.
@@jcondon1 Yeah that's pretty typical. For example my generator says 30 amps at 240 volts but on the schematic the breaker for my particular model is only rated for 24 amps. One thing I did is pull up the 2020 NEC and from the current capacity table my cord is good for only 25 amps. However the plug and receptacle are good for 30 amps.
I've seen worse. There's someone where I work that has apparently been tasked with making power cords for our high power DC Power supplies. Some are single phase, some are 3 phase. 208 or 480 VAC sources depending. Power supplies provide 48V and tons of angry pixies, up to nearly 50KW. This jackass, and I wish I knew who it was, cuts the outer sheath back about 4" so that when the plug or cap is wired, you can see the individual wires in all their glory. I'm not a Class A PITA safety nanny, but I have brought this to the attention of my bosses and the higher-ups yet it seems to continue. Not as frequently, but still happens. I would be more than happy to teach this person how to do it right, and safe but I suspect he's one of those know-it-alls and just poo-poo the whole thing. Management I must admit, has done a pretty good job at either laying off or firing most of the morons, layabouts, and outright incompetent jerkwads but a few remain. Oh, I can't remember the name of the type of ac connector we use, but it's one of those fabulously expensive Hubble connectors that one might expect to see on a dock providing shore power to a Navy destroyer.
I guess I don't understand why the wire was discolored for 12 inches and does it still cause resistance if you shined up the copper at the connection. The other end looked like cuts in the wire and not from brittle insulation, correct? Great video, Thank You for the information. I'm trying to learn and keep older generators running.
The black color was most likely copper oxide. It is not conductive and will increase resistance until circuit failure occurs. If a solid core copper wire, then cleaning it off would probably work. Because this was stranded wire and black all the way though, not able to clean it up. The insulation was not brittle. Just cuts in the wire.
1:48 the white wire, is NEUTRAL. My 9kw Powertec gen says, '' NEUTRAL BONDED TO FRAME '' . perhaps, his gen/hookup to whatever, wasn't properly connected ??// just wondering. Usually moisture doesn't go all the way back......unless that plug-end, was lying in water, when not being used, like on the lawn, ??
Looks like the cord was probably carrying too much load and essentially cooked the insulation. It happens when people don't use the correct components or overburden the wire. Using the proper stuff, and doing some simple arithmetic as to load, goes a long way to maintain safety.
If I understand you, when running if you remove the battery connection it turns off? Would need to the generator model to tell for sure. But would wonder if there is a fuel solenoid on the carburetor that requires power from the battery or maybe the ignition system is CDI based and needs to be powered?
I have a "concession trailer" that has a 4 prong/30amp plug..I am running off of my house 20amp plug(3 wires)..this leaves my neutral wire no where to go. "Hypothetically"..have you seen any cases where someone has left the neutral off of the 20amp end?..or any cases where someone wired the neutral in with the ground,perhaps?.. I won't be using over 20amps of power, and I have a sub panel in my booth, that will trip..and one at the house that will trip. So that much would be safe..."HYPOTHETICALLY".
This may not be the problem for this cord The unofficial way to hook your generator to your house is to make a cord like this and back feed your house though a 220 plug already in your house This can be done with a lot of care “”””””””””””””””BUT””””””””””””” Is neither proper or safe and overloads can occur my guess as to the cord problem There is no way a cord like this can handle a very large load
The cord was rated at 7200 watts. The generator can only sustain 5000 watts. I am surprised this would happen when using an overrated wire gauge unless something was wrong with the connection to the house.
Question from the other side 🇬🇧 here: I'm aware that U.S. color coding is black for hot(1) and white for neutral, is the red hot(2)? 😇 The scary thing for us is that the older version of BS7671 (Pre-EU) specifies red for hot and *black* for neutral, which must be an absolute bane for any British migrants to the US! 😳
It is all confusing. For home wiring, yes black is hot 1 and red is hot 2 (leg 1 and leg 2). Black makes much more sense as the neutral color. My car (and I assume most) use black as neutral and red as the hot. Very confusing.
@@jcondon1 It's one of the reasons for why I prefer the EU coding (Brown for hot(1), blue for neutral. We don't use split-phase in Europe, so no 2nd hot) - It clearly distinguishes AC circuits from DC circuits, particularly valuable if you have both going around the same room (e.g: Because you have a solar or battery array). 👍 Brown might seem like an odd choice (And I can see some thinking brown = soil = ground) but this was chosen as those two colors and green (Earth) remain visually distinct even under varying types of color-blindness. 😇
a 10 guage flexible cord is NOT rated for 30 amps. at the full 30 amps, overheating will occur. the cord in the video show obvious overheating. upgrade to a 8 guage cord for this installation.
